Not 24 little hours ago, we had Jean-Charles Dupoire and Sylvain Brissonnet's Le Kensington in the Market virtually to ourselves. But here it is Saturday lunch and it seems as if le tout Toronto - and their parents - have descended on the joint.

Our charming server from the night before asks if we have reservations. Why, yes, we do. Where do we start?

Dinner at the new bistro in the old La Palette, brought to us by the team responsible for the respectable Loire on Harbord, begins with a basket of baguette that's sliced so thinly it might as well be Melba toast. Starters of mealy boudin noir blood sausage ($11) and odd log-like croquettes of crunchy diced pig's ear and mushy mushrooms ($10, both with greens in basic vinaigrette) get us off not with a bang but a thud.

Chef Dupoire, who's nowhere to be seen this evening, manages to turn seared sweetbreads into chicken nuggets, their bed of baby bok choy and pea pods ($21) unnecessarily drizzled with a diabolical sauce Diable. And $32 for a rotisserie chicken desperately in need of some Simon and Garfunkel - parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme - sided with yucky succotash ($16 half) is a joke, especially when a far superior bird goes for $12 at Inigo (see listing, page 29).

Despite its recommendation, lavender and honey crème brûlée ($9) proves so subtle, it tastes of neither.

Back in the kitchen for lunch, Dupoire sends out a straightforward steak tartare topped with a hard-boiled quail egg ($12) and a perfectly executed wing of skate ($20) in buttery sauce meunière. Too bad the unsustainable fish comes partnered with a potato salad that hasn't finished cooking. And the dish listed enticingly as "pork belly and eggs with rosti ($15)" turns out to be an unappetizingly flabby slab of braised pig stomach over a pair of sunny-side-ups and a soggy wedge of potato pie.

If a bistro's lemon tart is its benchmark of success, Le Kensington's take on the classic closer is a catastrophe, a cold rubbery rectangle of anemic custard in a swirl of home ec chocolate sauce ($9).